In the article the author analyses various sources of inspiration noticeable in the works of Ananda Devi. Considering the writer’s background, her native island of Mauritius, a multi-ethnic multi-lingual and multi-cultural island, various cultural inspirations are noticeable in her works. The author of this article focuses on the novelist’s prose and analyses the cultural references rooted in Indian, European, African and Creole cultures. The aim of this analysis is also to describe the intertextual relations that exist between some of Ananda Devi’s texts and the works of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Arthur Rimbaud or Malcolm de Chazal, T. S. Eliot, Toni Morrison and J. M. Coetzee. In the analysis, the author draws on the research of Homi Bhabha and Gérard Genette.
Ananda Devi, an accomplished modern writer from Mauritius, creates texts that are difficult to classify according to their style and genre. The author is reluctant to accept the treatment of her writings as feminist, particularly Western European feminist, they are surely closer to postcolonial feminism and eco-feminism. Nevertheless, the status of women, their rights and tolerance for otherness are the key elements of Devi’s artistic expression. Her characters rebel against the patriarchal society, they endeavour to discover their own place and identity, which frequently means regaining control over their bodies in the first stage of the transformation. Devi’s female characters live close to nature, where they find comfort, some of them go through a regress to the world of animals and plants.
In the article the author analyses the influence of post-memory in the formation of national and individual identity among the inhabitants of the young Republic of Mauritius presented in contemporary Mauritian literature in French. Important and at the same time tragic historical events of Mauritius are: slavery, the arrival and labour of indentured workers from India and the tragedy of the Chagos Islanders. The author analyses some texts by Ananda Devi and Shenaz Patel in which both writers describe the impact of ancestral history on the lives of characters representing the next generation from different ethnic groups living on the island. In her analysis, the author refers to the works of Marianne Hirsch, Paul Ricoeur and Alex Mucchielli.
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